This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Biological materials are routinely processed in order to enhance various properties or characteristics of the biological materials. For example, whole blood is often harvested from a patient or retrieved from a blood bank, and fractionated. The whole blood can be fractionated into a red blood cell concentrate, platelet-rich plasma, platelet-poor plasma, or an autologous protein solution. Likewise, bone marrow aspirate is often harvested and processed to generated concentrated bone marrow aspirate. The type of biological material being processed and the type of processing to be performed depend on individual patients and the conditions being treated.
Although biological materials are routinely processed, the devices used to process the materials are usually complex, costly, and require elaborate processing schemes. Such devices are often bulky and the processing schemes typically require multiple processing steps, which typically include centrifugations. Often, multiple centrifugation steps are necessary in order for a medical practitioner to arrive at the desired product. The centrifugation steps are timely and can result in product loss when isolating fractions.
Therefore, there is currently a need for new devices for processing biological materials that are cost effective, easy to use, and that require fewer processing steps than currently available devices.